“I’ve never been able to handle confrontations, so I told him I was leaving. With that, all hell broke loose. He shouted and roared at me, grabbed a long knife from the kitchen and completely destroyed the livingroom, slashing furniture and smashing ornaments. Then he locked the front door, pointed the knife at me and said ‘you’re not going anywhere’.”

Bottle of perfume

Nothing was said the next day and Siobhán buried the experience and carried on. Three months later, on her birthday, he gave her a bottle of perfume and she accidentally dropped it when taking it out of the box.

“He swore and shouted at me for being stupid and what happened next was so quick I still don’t remember it properly,” she says.

“One minute I was standing there watching the perfume bottle shatter then, bang! I was sitting on the kitchen floor wondering what the hell had happened.”

Next day, when Robert was at work, she felt so low she spent most of the morning searching the house for pills for an overdose.

“I’d gone from being a strong, independent woman to this quivering wreck, with no friends, no job, and no confidence.”

A friend had given her a card for Women’s Aid and she phoned them. After the call, she packed and left.